Exodus. Not just a thrash metal band from the 80’s, but also a weird-ass book in the Bible.
From Exodus 34:14 it reads:
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
Lord Jealous… Can you dig that? (Add Fonzi from Happy Days tone and inflection.)
So just to attempt to make “jealousness” not sound totally weird, let’s take a look at the definitions of “jealous” from Dictionary.com. The least worst definition is the 5th definition:
“solicitous or vigilant in guarding or maintaining something.”
By solicitous, think of “concern.” For example, a solicitor is usually a salesman, but part of his character is to show “concern” for his customer. A solicitous salesman is one who is asking a lot of questions and digging to find the root of why a customer might be resisting a purchase. In terms of “jealousy,” a solicitous Lord (in the OT) is one who is digging to find which of his people are not worshipping him.
Fascinatingly, Dictionary.com also uses this example to illustrate definition #5:
“The American people are jealous of their freedom.”
Ha! Love it. Do you know what opposite of jealousness is? Compersion. See Gilfoyle explain it to Dinesh in HBO’s Silicon Valley. Do you know what the state of America’s border policy is? It is not “jealous; definition #5.” America basically has open borders right now, thus the state of America’s border policy is compersion. You may as well transpose that to the way Americans feel about their freedom. “The American people are compersionous of their freedom.”
If Jewish history is real and the Jews lost their country in 70 AD with the Roman siege of Jerusalem, then America has a similar fate. The title of Ann Coulter’s book Adious, America sums it up so perfectly, you probably don’t even need to read her book.
Sure, the comparison isn’t a total overlap. Jews apparently had an omnipotent God protecting their country. Americans never had that going for them. But the similarity is that eventually it appears that there is no guard protecting the country, whether it’s the supernatural “Lord Jealous” or the down-to-earth American border patrol.
But I’m here to talk about theology, not border control. Specifically, Abrahamic theology. And more specifically, Judeo-Christian theology, as Judeo-Christians like to describe it. They love to say their God in the New Testament is the SAME one from the Old Testament. Oh boy…
Among the many aspects Christians speak of about their God, one in particular is that Christians say their God is “immutable.” “Unchanging.” “Constant.” This is a completely incongruent definition if they are making the claim that their God is the same God from the OT to the NT. Let’s talk about covenants. And if you want to get technical, there’s about 7 covenants in the Bible, maybe even 12. But if you want to simplify things, there’s really only 2 covenants that are talked about. The Old one, and the New one. So Christians will talk about, literally, a New Covenant. If their God is unchanging, then what the hell was wrong with The Old Covenant? Sorry, but if you’re a God and you’re going to be immutable, then you only need 1 covenant. Just for fun, you could say Jews believe in 1 covenant, and Christians believe in 2 — which would make it look like if you wanted an “immutable” God, then you’d have to be Jewish. Lol, but wait, there’s more!
Jews did apparently lose their country in 70 AD. They are trying to get it back via “Zionism,” but it’s been pretty costly and uphill, to say the least. Between 70 AD and 1948 AD, there has been a Jewish diaspora. Diaspora meaning, a scattering of the Jews across the globe. If their God “Lord Jealous” was truly omnipotent, first of all he would’ve been a lot more effective with his “jealousy.” He could’ve secured the hell out of the borders in 70 AD, and the Roman siege of Jerusalem would have failed. Christians like to use The Great Commission from Matthew 28:18-20 to show God’s new plan. This is called “The Great Commission.” The Great Commission is basically a Christian NWO type of plan.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Christians will also say something like, “The Jews needed to be scattered to make room for the Gentiles.” That’s interesting. Certainly they must mean “racial Jews” not “religious Jews.” Because the “religion” of Jews, aka “Judaism” should be obsolete with the New Covenant. All of the Jewish people practicing kapparot just haven’t received the memo. And thus, what Ann Coulter said about “waiting for Jews to be perfected” is a congruent position.
Don’t worry, it gets weirder. Obviously, there’s a lot of “Christian Zionists” out there. In fact, probably the majority of Christians are Zionists. But why would any Christian be Zionist? The Jewish plan for Israel that Jews actually have is to go back to doing animal sacrifices in a new, theoretically-soon-to-be-constructed, Jewish Temple. Well, why aren’t Christians also sending Aztecs back to Mexico so that they can do religious sacrifices like they used to back before 1519 AD? If you dial the clock back to 70 AD for one group, 1519 AD should be no problem. Congruency has to start somewhere, and if the starting point is at Zionism, they may as well let every pre-Christian indigenous religion go back to doing what they were doing.
Overall, we have 3 points of religious failure.
- Neither the Christian God nor the Jewish God is an immutable deity. If your God has more than 1 covenant, then your God changed.
- The Jewish God wasn’t good enough at jealousness (definition #5) even though “Lord Jealous” was his actual name. And therefore he was never an “omnipotent” God.
- If you grant Judeo-Christians really do have a God (and that God is non-immutable and changed from the OT to the NT), then Christians who are Zionist are woefully incongruent with their New Covenant.
You can point all of this out to Christians, and Jews for that matter. But what you will find is they like to first come up with their definition of God first, and then mash their Bible into it. Eg, “Our God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent!” And then no matter what the Bible verse is, they will say anything to make it fit into their definition. However much rationalizing it takes, however many splinters in the mind it takes, or however many tons of cognitive dissonance it takes. That is not to say there aren’t some reasonable theists in this world, because there certainly are. Theists that believe the Bible is fictional can at least take a mystical route in philosophical discussions by saying something like: “no one can know the mind of God.” This allows them to keep their mathematically impossible definitions but without the headaches of explaining “holy” religious texts ad nauseam.
The best match for the description of “Lord Jealous” in the Bible is Dragon (literally named “Dragon”) from the cartoon movie Shrek. If you wanted something different, well, you can look around for a better match but you won’t find anything better.